


Maker

by Graculus



Category: Wild Wild West (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-15
Updated: 2013-09-15
Packaged: 2017-12-26 16:00:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/967869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Graculus/pseuds/Graculus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An unexpected meeting - written for the Trope Bingo prompt 'au: apocalypse'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Maker

Later, at the lowest of times, he'd wonder whether he had actually been one of the lucky ones after all. 

He'd survived, though the blight had left him much weaker than he could ever remember being before. He'd been one of the first survivors, falling ill before the town of Perdition realised what was wrong and acted to keep themselves uncontaminated. If he'd been well a month or so longer he'd have had to sweat it out in the quarantine houses, with a much higher chance he wouldn't survive the experience.

Many hadn't – women seemed to weather the blight better, coming out of the other side with their faculties intact and bodies much less damaged. Nobody knew why, or if they did they weren't telling folks who lived in the middle of nowhere like he did now. As for children, it was touch and go. Nobody could predict who would live or die – again it was boys who were more likely to die, but not by such a wide margin, so at least the population would recover some time. If they survived to get the kids to adulthood and having kids of their own. 

Perdition itself was as protected as the survivors could make it. They'd set up a roster, keeping the sentry posts covered all the time, and it had served them well the first couple of times opportunists had tried to take advantage. Rifles were rifles regardless of who used them, after all, if the user was a half decent shot. Outsiders had learned quickly that a town of mostly women wasn't easy pickings like they'd thought and, after that, it was likely word of their resistance had got around. 

They couldn't know that for certain, of course, but it seemed the most likely explanation for why they were mostly left alone, except when folks from elsewhere wanted to trade. Not often, because they had pretty much everything they needed, but there were times when raw materials were required and nothing could be substituted, so they'd have to trade whether they liked it or not. 

Those were tense times. They'd come to arrangements with neighbouring towns, each as trigger-happy as themselves, a system of boxes that could be overlooked by everyone with nothing left to chance. Notes passed with requirements and demands, sharpshooters overseeing their delivery and collection till some kind of agreement was reached and goods were exchanged. A crude system, made all the more difficult by an understandable unwillingness to share the same air as one another, but functional in the most part. 

At least he'd found himself a niche, even if it hadn't been one he would have anticipated. He was an actor by training, a travelling one by choice, and at times his feet still itched for the open road, if that desire hadn't potentially been a death warrant in these desperate days. 

There was no call for Shakespeare or Marlowe and Perdition already had a schoolteacher, so he'd turned his hand to more practical matters, commandeering the town's abandoned smithy. He'd learned the basics of the craft along the way, from shoeing horses to repairing the various parts of his decaying wagon, and those skills had come in handy here, giving him a claim to a home in the town whether he wanted one or not. 

He was no longer Artemus Gordon, star of the stage from California to New York; he was Maker now and that was what he seemed likely to remain till the end of his days.

\----------------------

He should have known there was a problem when he found the horse – nobody could own livestock like that in the surrounding area without him knowing about it, him being the local blacksmith and all.

A strange horse meant a stranger somewhere close by, even if the horse itself had wandered into his pasture with all of its tack and no sign of anyone owning it. Not that Artie wanted to think about the reception any stranger might get, regardless of how much money they might have, or even because of it. Since the man who owned that horse, a fancy looking black stallion, had money enough to spend on fancy saddles and the like, he'd be a fine target for the lowlifes who didn’t have enough fire-power to take on the town itself. 

It had taken all Artie's patience and a not inconsiderable amount of oats to coax the horse into the barn; the last thing he needed was anyone from town spotting a strange animal and sticking their nose in his business. At least till he figured out just where it had come from, where its owner was and what kind of trouble he'd got himself into. 

Once the horse was settled in one of the back stalls, tack removed and carefully hidden out of sight, Artie returned to the house and collected his rifle. Fortunately it wasn't difficult to follow the tracks the horse had made; for once the recent spell of wet weather was something to be thanked rather than cursed. As he reached the top of a small hill, Artie could smell wood smoke and crouched down, taking advantage of the low bushes that covered the area. 

Below, out of site from both Artie's place and the town but close to one of the small rivers that crossed the area, was a camp-site, as he had expected would be the case. A fire burned fitfully at its heart, almost down to the last few embers, but there was no sign of whoever had made it. Artie watched as patiently as he could, but after a few minutes had passed and there was no movement below, he decided that his only option was to investigate. 

Once, Artie knew, he wouldn't have been as cautious as this but then the blight had happened and changed everything that he thought he knew about himself. He'd always considered himself a child of the cities, even as the necessities of his work had meant he'd seen significantly more of the countryside than he ever would have expected. 

If his former self could have seen him now, cautiously picking his way through the low undergrowth like he'd been doing that all his life, Artie was sure his former self would have laughed himself silly. Artemus Gordon, thespian, now appearing as a woodsman or taking the starring role in _The Last of the Mohicans_ , perhaps?

A sound made Artie freeze in place, hands clenching on his rifle as he tried to pinpoint the direction from which it had come. There, towards the river – after the sound wasn't repeated, Artie moved once more, heading in that direction. 

The man, when he found him, was everything that the fancy saddle had led Artie to expect he would be. His suit was equally fancy, as was the low-brimmed hat that lay by his side. 

The man himself was currently face down on the ground, one hand stretched out towards the river, his fingers still clutching the strap of the canteen he had apparently been trying to fill. He'd been lucky that he hadn't ended up face down in the water, or else Artie would be looking at a corpse right now, instead of a man whose breathing told him that the newcomer was well on the way to being another sufferer of the blight. 

Artie crossed to where the stranger was lying, rifle raised in case the other man was shamming after all, but one look at the stranger's face was enough to confirm what his laboured breathing had already suggested. His forehead was sheened with sweat, jaw clenched tight as if the illness could be fought with sufficient determination – if only that had been the case, Artie thought, reaching out to remove the stranger's gun from its holster just in case. 

The weapon was nicely-balanced, clearly well maintained, and Artie slipped it into his waistband as he squatted next to the stranger. 

“Hey,” Artie said, reaching out and shaking the other man's shoulder firmly. “Can you hear me?”

He knew it was unlikely he'd get a response, given that the man was so clearly unwell, but it was always worth asking – Artie knew he would need to move the man from here and he wouldn't be the first to react badly to being handled, even with the best of intentions. 

“I need to move you away from here,” Artie continued, giving the man a once-over as he stood and considered the best way to do that. “Somewhere safe and warm, I promise.”

He ought to tell the town leaders, take the man to the quarantine house on the outskirts of Perdition where he could take his chances, so why didn't that seem like a good idea? He didn't know this stranger, had no reason to think he should be treated any different from anyone else who might come into town suffering from the blight, so why did the idea of turning him over to another's care seem so wrong? 

Maybe it was just the isolation, something his former life had never prepared Artie for – heaven knew there was precious little privacy backstage and he'd never been short of willing bodies, whether it was for an after-show drink or something a little more intimate than that. It could be as simple as that, just lack of human company and along came a handsome, well-dressed stranger who just might fit the bill and give Artie exactly what he needed. 

Assuming he didn't die of the blight first, of course. After that, Artie would just have to wait and see how things worked themselves out...


End file.
